Tolerance? What a ridiculous concept !

Call it the scotch working overtime, but my ears pricked up during a party I was at last week when I heard a woman state “It’s so important to teach kids tolerance in this day and age”. Something didn’t quite sound right with that. So I refilled my glass and sat back to listen in on the challenges that we face in a culturally diverse society and that tolerance is what is needed.

10 minutes later, I was convinced – Tolerance is a ridiculous concept.

Let me ask you something… Think of a person you really like – a friend, relative, anybody that you’re fond of. Do you tolerate them?  Or love them?  Why don’t you ever say this about your loved one “Oh, I tolerate my boyfriend just fine”.  When do we tend to use the term “tolerate”?  We use it in the presence of people we can’t stand, but simply have to put up with. For example, you might say “I can barely tolerate my boyfriend’s buddies” or “I can’t tolerate my mother-in-law anymore”. I can go on….. but I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.

We tend to consider tolerance as a good word. Heck, we’re teaching this stuff to our kids in school.  The word has the aura of peace, understanding and cohesiveness in society. Yet our language betrays its real meaning to us.

The opposite of tolerance isn’t intolerance…. its understanding. Where tolerance urges us to keep our opinions (of people we don’t like) to ourselves, understanding pushes us to try and see where they are coming from.

Isn’t that what this world needs? Our world is coming together at a stunning pace. We haven’t been exposed to so much cultural diversity in the past 50 years as we have in the past 10 years. And a lot of us don’t know how to handle it.  We almost feel as if our identity is under threat and the natural instinct is to assume a position of “We” vs “Them”… anything that makes us better than the others. You can extend this to any situation – the workplace, family, anything.

And as we can’t do anything about their presence, we tolerate them.

What if we didn’t tolerate them? What if we tried to understand where the other people were coming from? What if we thought “They’re not idiots. Let me see what they’re trying to tell me”. When we’re no longer taking the refuge of a weak word which (ironically) makes us feel superior as well, that’s when we’ll see our paradigm change.

The clumsy, geeky neighbor’s kid who’s always hanging around your kid’s toys may emerge to be a kid who looks for love wherever he can find it. The new immigrant with the funny accent at the office may emerge to be a brilliant strategist only if people would listen to him without laughing. And the beggar who bugs you for change may simply be a guy who’s given up on life. Heck, who are we to judge?

So next time, don’t tolerate…. Understand!

Have you seen your kid lately?

Its generally not the best way to start the day when you have to get up and shovel 15 cms of snow at 5:00 am in the morning. But that was the way it started for me this morning. So after an hour of back breaking effort, I came back into the house, poured myself some coffee and went upstairs to wake up the kids.

I walked into my 11 year old’s room and was about to wake him up that I just stopped. I looked at his face for a moment and quietly sat down on the side of his bed. I spent a couple of minutes looking at him… sleeping peacefully.

He seemed different this morning. I saw an innocent child trying to grow up as best as he could. I saw him encountering the trials and tribulations of “blending in” with everybody at school, the secret crush he has on a girl in his class, and holding his own among friends and foes. I saw him struggling with his Math homework and trying to make sense of numbers that don’t come easily to him.

I saw him fighting to keep his dreams of becoming a scientist alive. Sometimes, he’s short on ideas, but never on enthusiasm (how come I didn’t see this earlier?) I saw him resenting me whenever we disagreed, but NEVER being disrespectful.

My God, I really have a diamond in my life ! I lay down next to him and gave him a BIG hug for being just the way he was. He woke up moments later and mumbled “G’morning, Dad”. Except for the blast of the strong morning breath, it was the perfect start to my day

As I drove into work, I started thinking… We call (myself included) tend to look at people from our eyes… and they seem a certain way. But when we really make the effort to look at them from “their” eyes, a very different picture emerges. This morning the person I regarded as a “son” changed into a magnificent human being that I was blessed to call my child. 3 hours into my day and I’m already missing him. I can’t wait for the day to be over so I can go back and ask him how his day went – “from his eyes”.

So let me ask you this (and I’d love to hear back)… Have you “seen” your kid lately?

Boy, does Karma come back to bite you in the …

About a month ago, I was helping a friend through some pretty difficult issues he was facing in his personal relationships. At the core of his problems was money. No, it was the mismanagement of money, but rather the “over-management” of it that was creating conflict in his personal life. His desire for financial security had ended up as the primary objective rather than the well-being of his family. Ironically, he wanted financial security for the welfare of his family.

So I was staring at a classic case of both sides doing what they did with the best of intentions for the family. Both good people, with good intentions. But amid those good intentions lay the conflict.

Now I’ve never been crazy about money to this extent. Everybody is different and that’s the way I like myself to be. So I counseled him from my point of view and urged him to give up control of the money… I urged him to make some decisions that are simply fun – without any regard to whether they make financial sense or not. He listened intently and promised to think things through.

OK, so that chapter finished there. And then after a couple of days, I was called upon to take my own advice…

My wife wanted to buy some family room furniture on Boxing day. Now when we bought the house last September, we both decided that we won’t spend any money on new furniture for a year. But she’s been wistfully looking at the empty rooms and speaking about how good they’d look once there was furniture there.

Now buying a house isn’t a trip to Walmart. And the recent purchase has left my bank account with a rather empty feeling. And any future, immediate purchases would need to come out of the credit lines (something I detest diving into).

So the question confronting me was – just how much emphasis should I place on this desire of hers? Here were my options:

• I can say “We had an agreement. Lets honor it and buy the furniture next year”
• I can delay the matter by saying “Lets think about it”
• I can take the big financial hit and howl while I go berserk trying to pay it off.

But then, I recalled the lengthy discussions I had with my friend and realized that money is simply… well… money. I have to look at what it means to me compared to what’s really important in my life. I mean what will bring me more happiness? Looking at my bank statement or looking at my wife’s face when she enters the family room each evening?

The answer was clear.

The next day, we spent $5,000 on some gorgeous family room furniture. There were no compromises made on quality, especially when it came to selecting the recliners. After all, it’s my tushy that’ll be spending the most time in those chairs for the next 10 years and damned if I’m going to compromise on those

Looking back, I made the right decision. I still wince at the thought of paying the debt down, but you know what? I’ll pay if off eventually… it’s just money. Someone once said “Money is nothing but paper with an attitude”. I believe that.